People Are Coming Together to Build Reparation Funds for Black People; Critics Say it’s the Government’s Job to Provide a Reparations Plan

White people are sending Black people money as “reparations.”

A Louisville organization called Reparations Roundtable and other groups alike use social media to crowdfund money and distribute it to Black people as reparations. They say their mission is to help Black people financially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current racial justice movement, Yahoo! News reports.

According to Yahoo! Life, some of the groups coordinating the reparation funds have also started building volunteers and board directors. One has registered as a nonprofit.

Reports show the groups have been trying to create ways to contribute to Black people’s reparations, specifically white people who are affluent and have disposable money. While some feel the groups are moving in the right direction, others feel this will overshadow the effort to have a reparations program implemented federally.

“The relevant party that bears responsibility is the federal government,” said William A. Darity Jr., said reparations scholar and professor of public policy, African and African American studies, and economics at Duke University. “This is not a matter of individual guilt.”